| A | B |
|---|
| A set of principles, either written or unwritten, that makes up the fundamental law of the state | Constitution |
| Rights of all human beings that are ordained by God, discoverable in nature and history, and essential to human progress | natural rights |
| A document written in 1776 declaring the colonists' intention to throw off British rule | Declaration of Independence |
| The government charter of the states from 1776 until the Constitution of 1787 | Articles of Confederation |
| A meeting of delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 charged with drawing up amendments to the Articles of Confederation | Constitutional Convention |
| A governing document considered to be highly democratic yet with a tendency toward tyranny as the result of concentrating all powers in one set of hands | Pennsylvania Constitution |
| A state constitution with clear separation of powers but considered to have produced too weak a government | Massachusetts Constitution |
| An armed attempt by Revolutionary War veterans to avoid losing their property by preventing the courts in western Massachusetts from meeting | Shay's Rebellion |
| A British philosopher whose ideas on civil government greatly influenced the Founders | John Locke |
| A series of political tracts that explained many of the ideas of the Founders | Federalist Papers |
| A constitutional proposal that the smaller states' representatives feared would give permanent supremacy to the larger states | Virginia Plan |
| A constitutional proposal that would have given each state one vote in a new congress | New Jersey Plan |
| A constitutional proposal that made membership in one house of Congress proportional to each state's population and membership in the other equal for all states | Great Compromise |
| A constitutional principle separating the personnel of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government | separation of powers |
| A constitutional principle reserving separate powers to the national and state levels of government | federalism |
| A principal architect of the Constitution who felt that a government powerful enough to encourage virtue in its citizens was too powerful | James Madison |
| A historian who argued that the Founders were largely motivated by the economic advantage of their class in writing the Constitution | Charles A. Beard |
| A meeting of delegates in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation | Constitutional Convention |
| The power of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government to block some acts by the other two branches | checks and balances |
| A form of democracy in which leaders and representatives are selected by means of popular competitive elections | republic |
| An alliance between different interest groups or parties to achieve some political goal | coalition |
| Rights thought to be based on nature and providence rather than on the preferences of people | unalienable rights |
| Change in, or addition to, a constitution | amendment (constitutional) |
| A group of people sharing a common interest who seek to influence public policy for their collective benefit | faction |
| The power of the courts to declare acts of the legislature and of the executive unconstitutional and therefore null and void | judicial review |
| The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution | Bill of Rights |
| A series of eighty-five essays published in New York newspapers to convince New Yorkers to adopt the newly proposed Constitution | Federalist papers |
| Supporters of a stronger central government who advocated ratification of the Constitution and then founded a political party | Federalists |
| The power of an executive to veto some provisions in an appropriations bill while approving others | line-item veto |
| Those who opposed giving as much power to the national government as the Constitution did, favoring instead stronger states' rights | Antifederalists |
| A law that would declare a person guilty of a crime without a trial | bill of attainder |
| A law that would declare an act criminal after the act was committed | ex post facto law |
| A philosophy holding that accommodating individual self-interest provided a more practical solution to the problem of government than aiming to cultivate virtue | Madisonian view of human nature |
| An agreement among sovereign states that delegates certain powers to a national government | confederation |
| A court order requiring police officials to produce an individual held in custody and show sufficient cause for that person's detention | writ of habeas corpus |
